by NALLA ARONI
While feminist movements have made significant strides in naming, recognizing, and advocating against femicide, the rest of the world appears disturbingly indifferent.
In Kenya, Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegi was brutally murdered—doused in petrol and set on fire by her ex-boyfriend just three weeks after returning from the Paris Olympics. In Switzerland, authorities recently revealed that Kristina Joksimovic, a former Miss Switzerland finalist, was killed by her husband, who confessed to the crime and allegedly dismembered her body and pureed it in a blender. In London, Cher Maximen was fatally stabbed in front of her daughter by a stranger while on her way to the Notting Hill Carnival.
Another day, another femicide globally. Although these incidents occurred separately, and these women live worlds apart, their deaths are tragically interconnected. While global homicide rates have generally declined, femicide has been steadily rising over the past two decades. In 2022, the UN recorded 89,000 cases of femicide globally, with 55% of these deaths caused by intimate partner violence or other perpetrators known to the victim. On average, this means that every 11 minutes, a woman or girl is killed somewhere in the world. In response to these troubling statistics, women across the globe have mobilized, with movements like #StopKillingUs in Kenya, #TotalShutdown in South Africa, and #NiUnaMenos in Latin America, fighting to end this violence.
Femicide is broadly understood as the killing of a woman or girl because of her gender—the most extreme form of gender-based violence. The 2012 UN Economic and Social Council’s Vienna Declaration on Femicide was the first to outline and recognize various forms of femicide, including intimate partner violence, targeted killings of women and girls in armed conflict, female infanticide, deaths related to genital mutilation, honor killings, and murders following accusations of witchcraft, among others.
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